Little cup of melancholy,inch-deep well of the blackestconcentrate of brown,it comes to your table without ceremonyand stands there shudderingback to an inner repose.Pinch it: it's still hot.

Soon, its mantle of bubblesclears, but the eye –all pupil, lustreless –remains inscrutable.Rightly so. This is your dailycommunion with nothingness,the nothingness within things.

Not to be sipped, it's a slug,a jolt: one mouthful, then gone,of comforting tarry harshness.Which you carry now as a pledgeat the tongue's dead centre,and the palate's, blessedby both the swallowed momentand its ghost, its stain.